Integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices are formed to include a multitude of individual transistors coupled together and to various other features to form functional devices. If any one of the transistors fails, device functionality can be destroyed. In advanced semiconductor device fabrication and manufacturing, plasma chemistry operations are typically used multiple times in the sequence of fabrication operations used to form virtually all integrated circuit and other semiconductor devices. Plasma operations include plasma etching operations and plasma deposition operations. Plasma vapor deposition, PVD, and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, PECVD, represent just two of many plasma deposition operations.
The plasma operations utilize excited ions and these ions are typically directed to the surface substrate, often at high biases. The excited, accelerated ions of the plasma species can cause damage to the previously formed features. Reactive ion etch (RIE) operations and other operations that utilize ion bombardment, can also damage existing features and the damage caused to the existing features is often collectively referred to as plasma induced damage.
The highly sensitive transistors utilized in integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices, commonly include polysilicon or metal gates positioned over a gate dielectric which may be an oxide or other gate dielectric material. Plasma induced gate dielectric damage is commonly referred to as the antenna effect, and is an effect that damages transistor gates and the transistor gate dielectric materials and can potentially cause yield and reliability problems during the manufacture of MOS integrated circuits. Device functionality can be destroyed if the gate dielectric damage is severe.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide structures that eliminate or alleviate any plasma induced gate dielectric damage.